Judith
von Halle is mostly known for her books and lectures about the life and meaning
of Jesus Christ. In this book she concentrates on a medical phenomenon which
today has taken on the characteristics of a plague. Senility, involving short
term memory loss and the general weakening of mental faculties associated with
old age, has been known for centuries, but the illness we now call dementia or,
in its more extreme stages, Alzheimer’s disease, has become more and more
prevalent in modern society. Not only the aged are affected, but symptoms have
been detected increasingly in the middle-aged, even in children. Before going further,
it should be noted that there is a difference between “normal” old age
forgetfulness and the illness which can lead to the affected persons becoming
little more than living vegetables. The former is benign, the latter
devastating.

In her introduction
von Halle describes why she decided to expand the first edition of this book,
which was directed to readers who were familiar with anthroposophy and its
terminology. When she was invited to give a talk at a Swiss retirement home,
where many of the listeners would have little or no familiarity with
anthroposophy, she decided to first give a basic overview of anthroposophical
concepts before going into the details concerning the nature and causes of
dementia. After her talk, members of the audience, both
those with no previous knowledge of anthroposophy and even anthroposophists,
told her that the inclusion of her explanation of anthroposophical concepts
made everything much clearer. So for the new edition she decided to include the
explanation. I won't blame anyone for thinking that as the translator of the
book I may be prejudiced. However, I can honestly say that one of the reasons
for which I offered to translate it was the clarity and conciseness of this
short explanation in the chapter What is the Human Being, which begins:

“...Such
consciousness about the human being, his true inner and outer nature, can be
acquired if one begins to consider him – which is, after all, his own being –
with the methods of anthroposophical spiritual science. Practicing anthroposophical
spiritual science is possible for everyone. No special qualifications are
needed. By being human one is qualified. For it is not at all the task of
anthroposophical spiritual science to investigate the spirit, but by means of
the spirit to investigate the world and humanity. The fact that this spirit is
available to the human being means that we are – without any kind of
specialized training – very well equipped for anthroposophical investigative
work, provided that we are really willing to do so.”

And ends with
the paragraph:

“Given that
man is a spiritual being with a physical body, it is obvious that the causes of
an illness are not to be found in the physical context, but rather the physical
breakdown is recognized as the impulse of spiritual causes and these causes are
to be sought within the spiritual components of the human being.”

One of the first
symptoms of dementia is memory loss. Von Halle goes on to describe how memory
is a collection of remembrances and where and how they are collected in the
human psyche, and once collected, or inscribed in the life-body, why it becomes
more difficult, because of this illness, to retrieve them.

There are
short-term and long-term remembrances. The author uses the image of a
tree-trunk and its various layers to explain where they are stored:

Thus we can at
least imagine why the different types of memories are on one hand more
permanent and others less so, and on the other hand more – or less – ,
difficult to extract when desired. And how this affects people afflicted with
dementia.

“That ever
more people in western culture are stuck in the decay of their material nature
is because they do not fill the gaps left by the physical decline in the fabric
of their being with such spiritual thinking. This means that the decline of
material nature – for example the dying of brain cells – would not necessarily
be problematic provided that the human being has timely developed something
capable of taking their place. This was the purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha,
to bring the human being to a stage equal to that of the Resurrected One on
Easter morning, namely to create an non-decomposable physical body through his
I-forces, a no longer mineral-physical, but a spiritualized physical body."

Judith von Halle
later describes the role the spiritual opposing forces play in the phenomenon
of dementia. Lucifer strives to cause human beings to lose their footing on the
earth, to “gawk at nirvana”, whereas Ahriman wants the opposite: materialism,
the denial of the spiritual world and of the spirit in man. Therefore, she
says, it is an error to think only in terms of good and evil, because Lucifer
and Ahriman, spiritual beings themselves, are actually opposed to each other.
The spiritual scenario is, in reality, a trinitarian one, with Christ in the
middle opposing the evil on both sides.

This does not
mean that the individuals suffering from dementia are necessarily materialists,
or the opposite. Rather, dementia is a plague of humanity as a whole. But who
has it and who doesn't isn't a roll of the dice either. The determining factor
is karma.

“In general
we can understand the outbreak of a certain illness in an individual as the
expression of a karmic cause. From spiritual science we know that the
disposition to the development of an illness reflects the result of certain
behavior, of deeds in a previous life. Nevertheless, we should not ignore the
fact that an illness is not sent by the opposing powers. It is we ourselves who
really bring it about, but it is the good divine spirits who convert our karmic
behavior in a previous life to a special “task” in the present life in order to
give us the opportunity to grow by means of this task. The individual’s
illness, whether it be the flu or a heart condition, is caused by his moral
biography during the previous incarnation. So-called risk factors, which may
really precede the illness, merely display the instruments, the “helpers” that
cause the karmic illness to break out in this life, so that a healthy balance
in the soul can be attained.”

However – and
here's where it gets complicated:

“If we
understand the illness of an individual as a karmic necessity, then the same
illness in the many must be the result of a shared karmic necessity. It is then
not a question of an individual destiny, but of a people’s or even humanity’s
destiny, for the karma of humanity, which must be resolved, also exists.”

Therefore,
dementia, when understood as a plague, may be related to individual karma as
well as a shared human karma, also involving individuals whose previous
personal karma is not the cause. This is also true in
the case of natural disasters, tsunami and the like.

“The
illnesses which the people of the west must increasingly fight against, and
which are not of a karmic nature – at least not of an individual karmic nature
– are directly related to the illness of the social organism, that is, to the
unrealized spiritual and Christian-moral goals of today’s civilization.”

The
author goes into considerable detail about the influences of individual and
human karma. In respect to what is called above the “illness of the social
organism”, she reminds us that dementia – “de-mens”,
“without spirit” – describes precisely the current state of our western
culture, and quotes Rudolf Steiner:

“Whoever sees
through these things will of course not take them as a reason for opposing
modern medicine with its external remedies. But a real improvement will never
come about through these external methods. What will come about later always
reveals itself in advance through esoteric knowledge. This consists of rightly
perceiving how morality in the present can lead to better health in the
future.”

If the human
being is considered to possess only a physical nature, or when his spiritual
components are ignored, and his illnesses are treated using physical diagnostic
methods alone – changes in the brain's structure, for example – the spirit is
unable to vivify the physical body, thereby maintaining or restoring its
healthy stability, and only the symptoms are treated. By changing our
conceptions of what the human being really is, however – that is, consisting of
body, soul and spirit – real progress can be made in understanding an illness
such as dementia, and illnesses in general. Judith von Halle concludes that
this can be accomplished through anthroposophical spiritual science.

As far as
Ahriman's role is concerned, she describes it as follows:

This process [the weakening of the human I] is Ahriman’s great plan, or that
of even higher dark powers, to prevent the human being from envisioning the
Christ-Being in the etheric world that surrounds and permeates our sensory
world, and to utilize this envisioning as a foundation for spiritual and
physical development. It is truly an anti-Christian struggle against humanity’s
general awakening to living remembrance. In this way Ahriman tries with every
means to take away man’s conscious control of his remembering process. He uses
our comfortable materialistic thinking for this. But materialistic thinking is
only the instrument for carrying out Ahriman’s plan to prevent humanity from
achieving wholly conscious living remembrance, and he possesses an ice-cold,
genial ability, added to the previously described processes which are
responsible for the dementia phenomenon. They are all means helping to carry
out this anti-Christian plan in the realm of matter, one coming from the
spiritual world that works into the sensory world.

As a
professional architect, Ms. Von Halle is well qualified to suggest what kind of
surroundings are most useful in designing the living quarters for dementia
afflicted patients in residential institutions. It is beyond the scope of this
review to go into any detail here. She also indicates what kind of people
should be entrusted with the patients' care:

“Caregivers
would have to be found who consider it their life’s mission and their destiny’s
vocation to be constantly together, at least during a part of their lives, with
one, two or three dementia patients, and not as a passing fulfillment of duty
in a stressful job. This can only happen out of real love, as a sacrifice not
accompanied by inner discord. During the candidates’ interviews it would have
to be decidedly emphasized that only people with this attitude be accepted in
the assisted living plan.”

He or she would also
have to be competent enough to carry out, or at least supervise, the artistic
activities which Ms. Von Halle recommends.

All this, as the
author admits, would be a difficult and expensive undertaking.Nevertheless,
considering that the dementia afflicted are people who have been affected by
life, who at the point in their lives when the strongest I-forces should have
been developed, they have completely withdrawn, its seems to me that even
the knowledge of such requirements can be helpful.

In concluding
this review, it is, I think, appropriate to quote Judith von Halle's concluding
paragraph:

Thus in a
culture influenced by Ahriman, the Christian forces of compassion, endurance
and love, although scarce, can be lighted anew, for it has been shown already
how, in company with the dementia afflicted, these attributes of the caregiver
lead to very beneficial effects – for the ill person as well as for the
caregiver. This moral attitude would not only have a positive influence on the
following generation and lead to a certain implicitness in care-giving work,
but the prevalence of the illness itself would be limited from the outset by
such a standard. Thus from an evil a good could arise – as in Mephistopheles’
motto in Goethe’s Faust: “I am a part of that force
that always wants evil, and always creates the good.” – which can bring
humanity a step further in its long and arduous path to becoming gods through
the impulse of Christ.

Judith von
Halle, born in Berlin in 1972, attended school in
Germany and the USA and subsequently studied architecture. She first
encountered anthroposophy in 1997, and began working as a member of staff at
Rudolf Steiner House in Berlin, where she also lectured; in addition she had
her own architectural practice. In 2004 she received the stigmata, which
transformed her life. Her first book was published in German in 2005, and she
now works principally as a lecturer and author. She and her husband live in
Berlin.